In recent years, consumers have drastically reduced the use of cash payment for goods and services and have more frequently relied on credit cards, debit cards, stored value cards, or electronic transfer of funds associated with a financial account to facilitate financial transactions. Due to the electronic nature of payment, financial institutions are able to track consumer behaviors involved in these transactions.
Financial institutions frequently provide multiple types of products, such as credit cards, debit cards, mortgages, brokerage accounts, and other types of accounts and may offer a number of different options related to the management of each account. Typically, account holders are informed of these options upon opening an account or through special offers that may be made periodically.
Many accounts can be accessed by more than one account holder. For example, multiple account holders may be authorized for use of a single checking account or a credit card account. Multiple account holders may have access both to personal credit accounts and small business credit accounts. Furthermore, mortgages are often held by two customers. In some instances, such as with a credit card account, a main account holder may have control over the account and other account holders may merely have access to the account. Generally, the multiple persons having an association with related accounts may be viewed as forming a financial network.
In existing financial systems, co-account holders are generally provided with the same interface and do not have the ability to interact with one another or to jointly and interactively plan to meet financial goals. Furthermore, any available financial planning tools fail to consider the actions and plans of co-account holders.
Given the increased availability of electronic resources, such as financial institution web sites that are available to account holders over the Internet, it is now possible to provide account holders with a real time display of account activity as well as available account options. Although financial institutions have increased the availability of resources to account holders, these resources remain uniform without regard for individual account holder behaviors, relationships, and preferences.
Accordingly, a solution is needed that leverages data available to financial institutions for each account holder in order to provide valuable up-to-date information about accounts and financial relationships to each account holder in an efficient manner. Furthermore, a solution is needed that provides a main account holder with leverage to control access by other account holders in a systematic manner.